McCain, Romney Go Another Round in Fla.

Video

Post's Bacon on Romney Campaign

The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr. talks about the campaign of Mitt Romney.

» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER

Within moments, McCain's spokeswoman had sent an e-mail attack to reporters accusing Romney of "flip-flopping" on energy legislation. She also said Romney opposed a McCain-backed "cap-and-trade" system for controlling factory emissions after previously supporting it.

McCain quickly escalated the clash. In a statement a few hours later, the senator said: "Mitt Romney's campaign is based on the wholesale deception of voters. . . . The truth is, Mitt Romney was a liberal governor of Massachusetts who raised taxes, imposed with Ted Kennedy a big government mandate health care plan . . . and managed his state's economy incompetently."

Romney, who has been accused of flip-flopping since launching his candidacy, sought to turn the tables on McCain. Romney asserted that the senator had changed his mind on President Bush's tax cuts and repeatedly reversed himself on support for ethanol while seeking support in Iowa.

"Senator McCain was against the Bush tax cuts and now says he's for the Bush tax cuts. He was against ethanol, then for ethanol, then against ethanol," Romney told Fox News in an interview at a private airport in Fort Myers, after a small rally here. "I think Senator McCain is willing to say anything to try and get elected. He's been looking for this job for a long, long time."

He also suggested that McCain's bill to cap and trade greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming would translate into $1,000 in additional energy costs for U.S consumers each year. McCain disputed this, arguing that U.S. companies would bring cost-efficient technologies to the market.

The angry tone between the two extended to the airwaves, as McCain launched a new negative radio ad. "If they're going to attack us, we'll push back, so if we have a little sport roughing them up, too bad," McCain adviser Mark Salter said.

McCain's new radio ad mocks Romney's economic record as governor and questions his electability, with an announcer saying, "The bottom line: Mitt Romney loses to Hillary Clinton. Republicans lose. We can't afford Mitt Romney."

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden decried the ad. "This is the McCain way. Senator McCain always sinks to a lower level and offers distortions and flailing attacks against his opponents when a race is close," he wrote in an e-mail. "If you ever need proof that [a] Washington insider with the wrong record on Republican issues is threatened by the new ideas and strong record of Governor Romney, now you have it."

At a photo op in front of a Texaco station here, Romney also addressed a topic he rarely touches on, his Mormon faith. In discussing his friendship with the church's president, Gordon B. Hinckley, who died Sunday at age 97, Romney called him "one of the great leaders in our faith."

Responding to reporters' questions, he spoke of meeting Hinckley when the former governor ran the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, and talking to him on the eve of launching his presidential run. According to Romney, Hinckley told him a presidential run "would be a great experience if you won and a great experience if you lost."

Staff writer Juliet Eilperin, with the McCain campaign, contributed to this report.